Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw Abdul yelling into a radio. Renee’s knee was pressed on Zeus’s chest. Mason felt his blood run cold as he stopped in the middle of the street. He let his rifle fall to his chest as he stood in the open, staring at the Libyan’s blood-covered shirt.
“Oh God, no,” he heard himself mutter.
Forcing his legs to move, Mason ran over to the Libyan and dropped to his knees. Zeus had been hit near the shoulder and blood poured out of the wound.
“Zeus… Jesus… c’mon, you’re fine,” Mason stuttered as he looked down at his friend’s ashen face. His breathing was shallow and ragged, and Mason prayed the bullet hadn’t hit something vital. “Get a fucking truck over here,” he yelled at the Hezbollah commander, who was still screaming into the radio.
“I can get up, I’m fine,” Zeus said weakly, trying to get his feet under him.
Mason felt his heart ripping in his chest as he began plugging the hole with gauze in an effort to stop the bleeding.
“Fuck… Zeus, I’m so sorry,” he said, tears welling in his eyes.
Abdul appeared with a pickup, and Mason yelled for someone to help him lift his friend into the back. Renee helped pull the Libyan to his feet and ignored his feeble groans as they laid him gently in the backseat of the truck.
“We have to go,” Renee was yelling, but Mason wasn’t listening. He looked down at the last friend he had in the world and then walked toward the sedan.
“Mason, the bomb,” Renee yelled, but Mason didn’t care.
He heard the truck behind him as he moved in an arc across the street until he could see Jones, lying on his side. Mason snatched the Glock off his hip, and his old teammate scrambled for his rifle.
“Look at me, motherfucker,” Mason yelled as he came around the car, the Glock up and firing. The round hit the man in the back of his leg. Jones went down but continued to crawl to his weapon.
Mason fired again, hitting the man in the ass.
“You want to die running away like a bitch?” he yelled.
Jones flipped himself over and stared up at Mason.
“Was he worth it?” Mason asked before shooting the man twice in the head. Holstering the pistol, he reached into the car and grabbed the black laptop and an assault pack that lay on the floor. There was a map lying in the passenger seat. He snatched it up, then rushed back to Zeus and Renee and jumped into the backseat of the truck.
They were jammed tight in the backseat, and Renee was putting pressure on Zeus’s wound as the Libyan’s head lolled from side to side. The American yelled at Abdul to get them out of the blast area and then began searching for something to treat his friend’s wounds. The backseat of the truck was littered with trash and dirt-caked wrappers but not a single medical supply.
Unzipping the assault pack, he dumped it on the floorboard at his feet. A radio, food, batteries, and a small trauma kit fell out. The American bent forward to scoop up the olive-drab kit. He took a penlike auto-injector of morphine out of the jumbled pile of supplies and pulled the plastic cap off the front. He placed it on the Libyan’s leg and depressed the button on the end. A heavy-duty spring fired the needle into Zeus’s leg with a snap and injected the powerful pain med into his bloodstream.
Mason had to almost climb onto his friend to inspect the wound. The bullet had gone clean through, missing his vitals, but the wound was still bleeding heavily and his clavicle was broken. Mason checked to make sure both lungs were intact, and then, unrolling the gauze, he began packing the wound as gently as he could while Zeus grunted and squirmed away. Suddenly there was a large explosion behind them.
He could hear the men in the back of the truck yelling. He looked out the back window to see the extent of the damage. The truck was about four hundred meters from the blast, but the men were still being pelted with debris and shrapnel. A dark brown cloud rose above the buildings and expanded outward from the overpressure. Orange flames were visible along the outer edge of the huge crater. Thick black smoke billowed up into the dust cloud as a deep rumble tore through the city block.
Abdul was chattering angrily on the phone, while Mason took a pressure bandage and wrapped it tightly over the gauze.
“What’s he saying?” he asked.
“He’s on the phone,” Zeus slurred.
“Well, you’re good as new,” Mason replied as he retook his seat.
“I can’t believe I got shot.” The Libyan’s head lolled to the side. He looked at Mason with dilated pupils, slightly slurring his words. The morphine had hit him quickly, leaving him pain-free.
“Hey, welcome to the club,” Mason joked.
“They are all dead,” he said seriously.
“I know.”
“So many more will die now.”
The narcotic had put him in a somber mood, and a single tear collected at the corner of his eye. Mason placed his hand on his friend’s head and tried to block out the pain welling up inside him.
“No, my friend, they won’t,” Mason said.
He’d totally forgotten about the metal cylinder in his pocket. Frantically he pulled it out of his pocket.
“Oh shit,” he said as he pulled it out and began looking for a bottle of water. He found one in the almost empty assault pack and quickly unscrewed the top. Ignoring Zeus’s questioning look, he slowly poured the water over the gouge in the casing and watched for any bubbles. After repeating the process two more times without seeing any signs of leaks, he let out a huge sigh and smiled at his friend.
“How did you…?” Renee asked, a wave of relief flooding her face.
CHAPTER 34
Mason’s adrenaline was long gone. He was drained and slumped in the back of one of Hezbollah’s Toyotas being driven away from the battle zone.
Tarek’s death sat like a burning ember in his chest. The man had been so young and full of life, and Mason felt responsible for everything. It seemed that everywhere he went, people died. The only change was that lately they were people he actually cared about. There was no one else to blame for his failures. Despite his good intentions, he was even more of a liability than he had been before. At least when he was on his own, he was only hurting himself. And Barnes was still alive.
The truck slowed and pulled into a neighborhood adorned with yellow Hezbollah flags. It was their base of operations in the city. After the commander passed through a checkpoint, manned by young men hardened by the war, he pulled the truck into a bombed-out building.
“Where are we?” Mason yelled into the cab.
“Our stronghold,” said a soldier as he cut the engine.
Mason nudged the prone Zeus awake. He had to drag the groggy and injured Libyan out of the truck. Blood had seeped through the bandage, and he needed to find a place to change it. As he and Renee steadied Zeus between them, Mason cast a longing glance back at the city before following the soldiers into the building.
It was a wreck, even by the standards of war. Sandbags were stacked against the walls and jagged sections of rebar jutted out at acute angles. All around them, Hezbollah men and women moved with a sense of purpose. They were filling sandbags, cleaning weapons, or preparing rations in a makeshift kitchen. Maps of the city hung on the walls, and ancient-looking radios were stacked on a low table in the corner.
The sun would be going down soon, and burn barrels were being set up in preparation for night operations.
The Americans propped Zeus on an ammo can and while a medic was looking at the wound, they were all surprised to hear a familiar voice greet them.
It was Ahmed.
“Looks like you are still alive, my friends.”